“They were stoned to
death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in
skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented—of whom the world
was not worthy.” Hebrews 11:37-38
They stared
out from the frescoes on the walls that faced toward the large baptismal font,
their eyes determined, confident, serene. The bodies of the saints, wrapped in
the vestments of archbishops and abbots, were static and grand, timeless like
the figures in most Orthodox ikons. But
there was something unusual in their faces—an unexpected wrinkle here, a drooping
eyelid there. Was that the mark of a
scar?
I asked the
guide about them. They were, in fact,
portraits, he said. Father Cyprian, the
master iconographer, had known these men.
He’d done the faces himself. The
saints were leaders of his own time.
Some had been his friends.
Perhaps he’d served alongside some of them at the Divine Liturgy, or
they’d sat in the shade to share a glass together on a summer’s afternoon, back
before the awful civil war and the ransacking of the monasteries, back when
mother Russia was a land of monks and holy men.
They were
the modern martyrs, the guide said, they’d given their lives for the Gospel in
that bloodiest of centuries, the twentieth.
The Communists had sent them to glory with the machine gun and the hand-grenade. Father Cyprian had escaped, and along with
the scattered remnants of several other religious houses, he’d helped to found
this monastery, Holy Trinity, in the wilds of central New York State.
In the
majestic church they would eventually build, topped with golden domes, the
interior walls had all been covered with frescoes in the classic Russian
style—scenes from the life of Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the apostles,
ancient martyrs and the great holy helpers.
Like so much else in the monastery, where some of the monks still
converse in Russian, it was like a tiny piece of the old country planted afresh
in this new world.
But the
Monastery’s Baptistry was different. No
church back in Russia could bear the images of these heroes, still counted as
enemies of the state, their names erased from the pages of history. But the font is where new Christians are
made. It’s where converts must weigh the
full cost of discipleship before they pledge themselves to follow Jesus to the
end. And Father Cyprian thought it was
essential that they see just how much could be asked of them.
We are, all
of us, “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,” as the author of Hebrews
recalls in today’s Epistle. And Father
Cyprian was summoning the greatest saints he had known to stand alongside them,
those who had been conformed to Christ in His death.
The eleventh
chapter of Hebrews is sometimes referred to as the Bible’s “hall of fame.” It lists great athletes of the faith, raised
up by God to advance His kingdom generation after generation. Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, the conquering
judges: the heroes of all those Old Testament Sunday School stories, they are
all there. Some of those listed could
easily be numbered among the winners in this world: those who “conquered
kingdoms and administered justice…put foreign armies to flight.”
But almost
without catching a breath, the author shifts his focus to a different kind of
hero. “They were stoned to death,” he says of the faithful, “they were sawn in
two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and
goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented.”
And of them, he concludes, “the world was not worthy.” But in the eyes of God, it is otherwise. Those nameless and numberless saints are
listed last, because in God’s eyes their witness is most precious.
Because in
their deaths, they have become like Jesus.
From the “destitute, persecuted, tormented,” the author turns directly
to Him, “the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set
before him, endured the cross, disregarding its shame.” Jesus is the king of saints, the one whose
glory is reflected in all the heroes.
And He reveals His faith and fulfills His mission most clearly in
suffering, losing His life out of love for God and the world.
We don’t
know so much about the people for whom the Epistle to the Hebrews is written,
but there are some clues in the letter.
The author warns against forsaking the faith because it is hard. He says that God’s purpose can sometimes be
revealed through suffering alongside Jesus.
“You have not yet resisted to the point of blood,[1]”
he announces at one point, but the suggestion is that this may still lay ahead
for them.
The Epistle
was written for people like the suffering Orthodox Christians of the Russian
Civil War, like the Christians of today in Northern Nigeria, Egypt, Sudan and
Syria, who live under constant threat from hostile regimes. It was written for people like the
parishioners of Saint Etienne du Rouvray in France, whose priest was killed
last month by Islamic terrorists, his throat slit at the Altar.
When the
Islamic State beheaded 25 Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya last year, each
one cried out “Jesus is Lord” before the sword’s stroke. It’s the cry of a hundred thousand saints, in
generation after generation. As Jesus
himself said, His last and greatest beatitude, “Blessed are you when people
revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on
my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the
same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.[2]”
Jesus
assured His disciples that faithfulness to Him would bring the hostility of the
world. “Do you think that I have come to
bring peace to the earth?,” he announced, “No, I tell you, but rather division!”
The division
and hostility Jesus describes are not inevitable or accidental—a sort of
generalization about what happens when people try to do good in cruel
world. They flow directly from the kinds
of claims that Jesus made about Himself and His mission. He did not only claim to speak the truth, He
claimed to reveal God’s own mind and will.
Jesus did not only offer advice about how to live, He claimed that the
only way to God came by following after His footsteps. To pledge allegiance to Him was not just to
find a fulfilling and meaningful approach to life, but to become a citizen of
God’s true and final kingdom. Jesus
doesn’t permit us to ride the fence on these matters. To choose Him is to reject all others.
When we are
baptized, we promise to follow and obey Jesus as our Lord. If we are sincere about that commitment, and
seriously consider it as we make choices each day about what we will do, we
could well encounter this kind of hostility and division. It’s not that Jesus is calling us to be
troublemakers. Indeed, New Testament
texts repeatedly urge believers to be at peace with their neighbors. But we have already made promises about what
is first in our lives—not the market, or the state, or our overbearing mother
or our boss—but Jesus Christ Himself, the Lord of heaven and earth.
For
centuries now, it has been quite easy to make these promises and live pretty
much like everyone else. In part, we’ve
been surrounded by pretty mild sorts of unbelievers, at least in this
country. But it’s also because we’ve
been far too eager to compromise and prevaricate, to wrap the cross in the flag
or to tie it up in a dollar bill.
Things may
well change, perhaps in my lifetime, almost certainly in the lifetime of my
sons. Cardinal George of Chicago said a
few years ago that though he expected to die in his bed, his successor might
well die in prison, and the archbishop after him a martyr in the public square.
He was probably exaggerating, but only so much. Our social power may well continue to
erode. No one will seek our votes. And a culture that has allowed us to stand
with a foot in two worlds may well call us to make our choice.
If it comes
to that for you, and I expect it will come in some form for most of us, may you
look to the author and perfecter of our faith, and his company of brave and
patient saints. Remain true to your
promises, acclaim Jesus as Lord, and trust in God’s protection and
deliverance. There is only one
Lord. He is your master. Do not forsake Him.
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